If you have gone to the grocery store recently and wanted to pick up a few Cokes you may have noticed the prices of Coca Cola products are outrageous. This is one of my reasons why I stopped drinking soda, but this is also why Coca Cola has posted a profit growth of 15% for the third quarter.

The Atlanta based company reported a net income of $247 million and earnings equaling out to 50 centers per share. This is up from the third quarter 2008, when the company posted a net income of $214 million and an earnings of 44 cents per share.

Of course the company is going to be posting higher profits this year, the cost of a 12 pack of any Coke product has jumped from $3 to $4.50 at my local Wal-Mart. This week you can find them on sale at Walgreens for 4 12 packs for $10, that is the cheapest I have seen Coke products for in months. Even in the 24 pack cases that are sold at Wal-Mart, they have been around $7 for a while.

This was one of my reasons why I should definitely stop drinking sodas; it was getting to be a very expensive habit and since it is the only thing that I had to have to avoid negative side effects (those awful caffeine withdrawal headaches that would happen after I decided to not have a Diet Coke before noon), I decided it would have to stop.